Nearly 50 Detroit residents and volunteers sat rapt in a ballroom at the St. Regis Hotel watching part entertainment, part political rally.

The small crowd was filled mostly with women and children, the new constituency for CPA and financial speaker Lisa Howze, who is running for mayor of Detroit.

“Women are 53% of Detroit,” Howze said. “And the other 47% are the men who love us.”

She had recited the slogan to me over lunch hours before and did not get angry when I reminded that some of those 47% are men who don’t love, who kill their girlfriend’s babies and whose current jobs cannot be written on résumés.

She knows, she says, but she needs to help them change through jobs and education, so the women she’s fighting for can have better lives.

After spending years watching her native city become more and more dysfunctional, increasingly violent and heartbreakingly hard to love, Howze said she’s running because she feels Detroit needs her.

“When I talk to residents in the city and in my district, there’s a sense of hopelessness, a sense of lost direction. I know that I could bring financial stability and acumen to the mayor’s office.”

Howze decided to enter public service the day after watching U.S. Sen. Barack Obama become President Barack Obama. She ran for Detroit City Council. She lost.

But she didn’t give up, choosing next to run and win a Michigan legislative seat.

In a city run mostly by Democratic men who decide by their support when it’s a woman’s turn to rise (using criteria that sometimes has nothing to do with intellect or fund-raising ability) Lisa Howze isn’t “the chosen one” for mayor.

So let’s be clear: Lisa Howze doesn’t stand a chance of becoming Detroit’s next mayor. Except when one remembers that Harry Truman didn’t stand a chance of beating Thomas Dewey; it was too soon in history for a Hawaiian named Obama to get elected to the U.S. presidency; and a gay Detroit TV journalist had no chance to become the City Council president.

So it might be prudent to at least listen to the ideas and passion from Howze, who has served in public office, who knows how to count and who entered the race before anybody else because her run wasn’t determined by who else might want the job.

And since elections are still won one vote at a time and at least a dozen people are on the ballot, this underdog is slowly gaining attention.

“I think she’s got a good team together,” said WCHB-AM (1200) talk show host Angelo Henderson, who has his finger on the pulse of Detroit’s communities. Henderson praised Howze’s team, including her campaign manager, Brandon Jessup, as well as her law enforcement advisers.

“The only problem,” Henderson said, “is that she and Krystal (Crittendon, the city’s former corporation counsel) are splitting the women’s vote. Krystal’s pretty strong, but she’s never run for everything and has never been elected to anything. I think that’s always true. Within any women’s movement, the biggest obstacle is other women. Can women support one another?”

Henderson said that Detroit needs healing as much as financial planning, and some voters might seem female candidates differently. “The hope is that women have more of a heart and care about children, that their passions are a little different,” he said.

Lisa Howze was the youngest of six children raised by a single mother on the city’s west side.

She graduated from Cass Technical High in 1991 and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business in Ann Arbor in 1995 and a master's of science in finance from Walsh College in Troy in 2004. As a child, Lisa Howze recalls, her mother was stern.

When asked what gifts her youngest daughter should get on holidays, her mother told friends: “Get her books.”

“My mother always focused me on education,” Howze said. “So I dedicated myself to studying. My mom didn’t have a lot of means. We were on state aid, but she came to parent-teacher conferences, and at the honor assemblies when I could look out into the audience and see her face, that meant a lot.”

Howze opened her first business at age 10, a lemonade stand. Five years later, a Junior Achievement task turned into a three-year job.

“Our first assignment was to sell a case of M&M candies. I took it to school the next day and sold all the candy on the Grand River bus when you could still take a bus and get to school on time. So I took the empty box and put it in my locker, and every time I opened my locker, my classmates would see the box and ask if I had M&Ms. I said no, but I can get you some.”

She went to the wholesaler on Grand River and bought case after case and soon expanded her product base to include Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Snickers, Mars, PayDays, Sour Patch Kids, potato chips, pop and drink boxes.

She sold her products out of two duffel bags and two lockers on the second and fourth floors. And she enlisted classmates as salespeople.

She eventually earned $18,000 and saved enough for her first semester of college. Through a teacher, she met a mentor from the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, and every summer she’d call and ask for a job. “Arthur Andersen ended up being my first company,” she said, “and the City of Detroit was my first client.”